


bitter realisation

by pumunu



Category: Antizeroes / Lucid Project
Genre: Dicksquad 2.0 - Freeform, Dissociation, Drabble, F/M, Gen, Self Harm, Suicide, this is so fucked up im so sorry zak, unreality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-15
Updated: 2017-11-15
Packaged: 2019-02-02 21:58:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12735132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pumunu/pseuds/pumunu
Summary: Turning to an outcome beyond fucked up, Reis learns what it's like to wake up from a never-ending sequence of dreams— all it takes is to fall.





	bitter realisation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VOREYEURISM](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VOREYEURISM/gifts).



> theres no ufckign resolution to this just tears bye

He should have seen this coming.

No one tells you about the side effects of waking up from a dream that you can’t tell is real or not; he remembers, many, _many_ years too late. The telltale signs of panic welling up in his chest in frigid swirls of unadulterated fear are the only things that keep him on edge; they’re the only things willing him to grasp at the collar of Nooni's shirt as they both cascade down, down, _down_ into darkness— the only things that keep her cradled in the small of his chest once the sickening crunch of bones, connected to limbs, connected to _him,_ meet the ground. When he refuses to release his friend from the embrace despite her strangled chants of _‘why?’_ or _‘how?’,_ Reis realizes that he doesn’t need to gasp for breath. No blood rises to the surface when he coughs and wheezes reflexively, and it occurs to him once again that these are the results of something that is neither his, nor her fault. It hasn’t been for a long time now.

Because to him, it's just that much easier to break bones than mend invisible wounds. Because to him, _you don't get to choose how things end._

This is all too familiar; him with his back to the ground and Nooni bent over him like the kind and loving girl she was. Add in the gaping wound to the back of his head. Add in her simpering smile, and those dull—  _fuck_ , those _dull_ eyes that used to be filled with so much color. For them both to be here like this, it must have elicited something to trigger point the gun into firing its last few rounds of bullets. So why is it so hard for her to understand that Reis will always be here, even to the bitter end? What is it that causes Nooni— _Nooni_ , who has always been the _sun_ , the light in his nihilistic life—to suddenly cave and do _this_? Reis has her pinned to his body, the steady breaths her form exhales slowly against his ribs only making it that much harder to contain the sudden outpour of wet, salty tears that stream down his cheeks and against the top of her scalp as he buries his face into it.

Nooni forces herself up off of him and presses a chaste kiss to his forehead. It's déjà vu on a macro level.

"I hate how I always have to drag you into my shit." She says, half jokingly, though neither laugh; it was true. His throat feels too dry to speak, too airless, yet he croaks out a response anyways, eyes fixated on the starless expanse of the sky.

"You... never dragged me into _anything_ , though."

Just listening to her, his body feels cold, so, so _**cold**_. All at once, his limbs are both immeasurably heavy and infinitely hollow, like he's sinking, sinking, sinking further into the ground, further away from the girl he wants so badly to reach.

"Nooni..." He breathes, and his voice sounds too far away, _much_ too far away. "I'm your friend. I care about you. That's why I'm here. Not because you made me."

And yet, does she even _realise_ that? Does she even realise how he adores her, how much he cares? Does Nooni even know that she's his _entire fucking galaxy_ and more, the oxygen he breathes, _the blood in his veins?_

How could she be so dispassionate? How could she be so nonchalant?  _She almost fucking_ _**died**_.

Reis felt like he was shattering, and this time it hurt more than any of the others his reality seemed to cave in on itself.

Because after all she's done for him, he couldn't do a _fucking_ thing.

The bitter realisation dawns, that despite all the time they shared together— all the fleeting, intimate moments, mirthful laughs and clasped hands, all the soft, tired smiles and whispered promises of a life much better than the shit they’ve been forced to bear— the effect his existence had on hers was ultimately meaningless. It makes Reis feel sick, the depths of his starving bowels tying themselves into ugly knots, and he feels the heated, angry sting of sorrow behind his eyes once again.

“I know, but—” she begins in reply, gripping the sides of her head as if it’s beginning to ache, “ _knowing that my entire life was a lie, and that you’re the only thing keeping me from doing stupid shit, I don’t know how much more I can take!_ ”

He listens helplessly as Nooni’s already-cracked voice escalates into broken sobs, and her prone form writhes above his own, trembles violently, curls like a dying flower. Scathing tears soak into the worn fabric of his hoodie as she clutches desperately at tattered blonde curls, pulling with harsh fists in an attempt to ground herself and she screams, _screams_ —

“Reis, why the _FUCK_ did you save me?!”

The inexplicable, the incomprehensible— he is cognisant of these truths and their limpid riddles, but whenever he would grow comfortable with the idea that, perchance, he had seen it all, it was brought back down with newly found revelations— ones _she_ created.

And because of this, she looked at him doubtfully, if only for a moment, before rising to her feet. "...I just didn't think it'd be this complicated, though. I... _Seriously_ thought it'd be better if I just—" 

 _ **"** Disappeared?" _Finishing a sentence to a claim so absurd it must have not been the same girl to utter it; the stillest image of falling to her death frames him, it was as if she had bore herself into the face of the unexpected and rendered him useless to stop it from happening, because if he had fallen just a second later, let her do what she wanted, what she _craved_ ,  _she would have lived true to her words_. 

Her hand reaches out for his, and they fit snug in his beaten grip, riddled with rhymes and the weeds of a self-inflicted battle he had been fighting all these years; it made him feel like he was tainting the very thing that shone _light_ amidst a shroud of darkness.

_"Yeah."_

 


End file.
